P.R.O.B.E: The Devil of Winterborne

 "I'm Gavin Purcell, not Dennis Wheatley!"

The first episode was good, if cheap. The second instalment is, I think, even better... if cheap. It is, as the above quote suggests, a very low budget riff on Dennis Wheatley devil worship cult stuff, is very cleverly written as the revelations unfold and (SPOILERS!) ends up having no apparent supernatural elements in the end.

It's not just the very well done plot, though. Mark Gatiss again gives us some superb dialogue. The ending is horrifying. Caroline John once again excels at a rather nuanced portrayal of the pipe smoking, older Liz Shaw... and is there a mild hint, as the two of them get a bit pissed on wine, that she and Patsy may be old flames? Are we also going to get Terry Molloy's semi-sceptical detective as a new regular?

The other standout performance is, of course, from Peter Davison, whose character we are kept guessing about until close to the end. His "confession" is truly chilling and shows how bloody good Davison can be when given the chance to play a baddie... although in this case, of course, things are not quite what they may seem...

There's some nice indications of evolving social attitudes here, as well as towards mental health with the character of Georgie, although admittedly this is outsider drama from the younger generation. Overall, though, this is a highly impressive second instalment. 

Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks

Part One



“Ace, give me some of that Nitro Nine you’re not carrying.”

As if the pre-titles sequence isn’t great enough, we begin just outside Coal Hill School. Wicked! Except that the kids seem to be wearing uniforms, an apparent continuity error.

The Doctor and Ace are walking by, Ace very much acting the teenager and hinting at a hinterland never possessed by Mel, while the Doctor ‘s new persona is now firmly and fully formed, as shown quite superbly as he just leaps straight into the van with Rachel and Allison and casually takes charge.

Then we’re off to Totters’ Lane. Which looks a lot more plausible than “it” did in Attack of the Cybermen. There’s a building which could be the one where it all started- except that right now there’s a Dalek in it!

I can’t remember any previous story as fast-paced as this. We’re introduced to the clipped but impotent Gilmore, the apparently friendly Mike and the frustrated Professor Rachel Jensen very very quickly, but they all have clear personality traits to remind us who they are. That’s good writing from newcomer Ben Aaronovitch.

I love the Doctor’s muttered “Humans!” as Gilmore insists on sending his men into the meat grinder. For different reasons, I also love the brick Mike uses as a phone! The story’s full of those nice touches to remind us that we’re in 1963- the Doctor having to remind Ace to use the choke in the van, for example.

The scene in the van is extremely nice for a number of reasons- the immense coolness of the Doctor and Ace switching places in the tunnel, the nice character stuff between them, the establishment of the Doctor’s grumpier, more manipulative yet still fluffy personality (or, in other words, a bit like early Troughton, which is definitely a good thing) and of course the exposition. We get an admirably concise potted history of the Daleks and a mention of the mysterious Hand of Omega. Naturally, much is left dangling.

We’re briefly introduced to Mike’s dodgy friend Ratcliffe, only for Mike to let him have the dead Dalek a couple of scenes later. Mr Bronson from Grange Hill turns up- not only Michael Sheard, but as a proper teacher with the glasses and everything! We discover that Rachel is Gilmore’s “Chief Scientific Adviser”- nice title!- and we see the inside of the school chemistry lab, which seems to have a book on the French Revolution left lying about. Hmm.

We finish with the revelation of a Dalek-like thing in Ratcliffe’s office- Davros?- and the doctor and Ace in a spot of trouble in the cellar. The cliffhanger is one of the all time greats as the Doctor is pursued up some stairs by a Dalek…



Part Two



“Frightening, isn’t it? To find others better versed in death than human beings.”

This episode is pretty much the reason I’m doing this Marathon, because one day in October 1988, at eleven years old and having just started secondary school, I happened to come across it. I’d watched Doctor Who before when I was younger, but drifted away from it after Colin Baker took over. This time, though, I was hooked. Looking it up, it seems that 12th October 1988 was the day I became a Doctor Who fan.

And I can see why- it’s bloody exciting. We start with a bit of action, and then we get the fabulous café scene which, bizarrely, seems to feature the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. There’s some philosophical musings about choices and consequences, and also the unspoken implication that while everyone else sleeps through the night the Doctor remains awake drinking coffee and ruminating.

Early in the morning he retrieves a levitating coffin from an undertaker, having been “an old geezer with white hair” when he first dropped it off. Well, well, well. With the assistance of a blind vicar he buries the Hand of Omega- best not to think of how he actually handled all the organisational necessities- and we hear the grave has been ready for “a month”. So presumably the school has been without a history teacher and a science teacher for about that time.

More exposition, during which the Doctor is seen reading a copy of Richard Gordon’s Doctor in the House in what seems to be a recurring gag after The Doctor’s Dilemma showed up in Dragonfire. Will we see any more of this? Anyway, there are two Dalek factions, the Imperial and Renegade Daleks.

Ace is left behind at Mike’s mother’s guesthouse, where among other things she encounters the phenomenon of television sets needing to warm up and almost catching the start of a new Saturday teatime sci-fi show scheduled for 5.15, called “Doc-“ something. I wonder what it was? But most impressive is Ace’s reaction to discovering the “No Coloureds” sign. It’s a nice moment.

Ace goes to the school to find her tape deck, as she misses her uber-modern technology, and discovers that loads of white and gold, Revelation-style Imperial Daleks have transmatted in. She proceeds to kick no small quantity of arseage, attacking Daleks with her baseball bat and leaping through a window. And this leads to another brilliant cliffhanger.



Part Three



“Weapons- always useless in the end.”

This is the first episode I ever recorded on its original transmission- and I’ve done the same for every episode ever since. So for me there will be no more stories in this Marathon that are particularly unfamiliar- although of course there are loads I haven’t seen for years. This one, for example.

The Doctor gets strangled by a strange looking claw from inside an Imperial Dalek; apparently the blobs inside have mutated functional appendages and are cyborgs. Lovely. And then we get more great moments- Rachel and Allison’s faces after the Doctor smashes the Dalek transmat with the baseball bat; the Doctor’s discussion with Ace about how such unimaginably advanced tech as a tape deck is a glaring anachronism in the year when sexual intercourse began; and a casual mention of “Bernard” and “British Rocket Group”. I’m sure Nigel Kneale would have loved that…

We establish that Ratcliffe has possession of the Hand, and then, in a key scene, the Doctor finally explains to Ace what’s going on. And it’s important stuff. Simply by writing the line “[Omega] left behind him the basis upon which Rassilon founded Time Lord society,” Aaronovitch resolves an apparent continuity clash between The Three Doctors and all Time Lord stories from The Deadly Assassin onwards. It’s fanwank, yes, but dammit, it’s the acceptable face of fanwank. Another interesting line is “Didn’t we have trouble with the prototype?” Gosh, I wonder where this could be going? Could script editor Andrew Cartmel have some sort of, I dunno, master plan up his sleeve?

The Doctor certainly has a plan, and apparently it’s to ensure that one particular faction gets its, er, hands on the Hand while ensuring there’s as little human collateral damage as possible. But others have plans too; the Black Dalek turns up, and the Renegade Daleks finally turn the tables on their human pawn, Ratcliffe. We discover that the mysterious Dalek thing is in fact that sinister little girl, and also that these Daleks have a “Time Controller” which is so very late ‘80s.

The Doctor and Ace dodge some tatty Daleks to discover the room where all this has just taken place, and the Doctor explains how the Dalek battle computer works- by taking a child’s natural imagination and enslaving it to the Daleks’ will, thus relieving them of their dependence on logic. How they must wish they’d thought of that during their war with the Movellans.

Mike reveals he’s been betraying secrets to his dodgy fascist mates, leading to some slightly embarrassing ersatz swearing from Ace. But never mind that- an Imperial Dalek shuttlecraft is landing…



Part Four



“Daleks are such boring conversationalists.”

It’s good to hear that old familiar throb inside the Dalek shuttlecraft. It’s also nice to see a bit of innovation and coolness with the Special Weapons Dalek, although admittedly it impresses me rather less now than it did when I was eleven.

I’m increasingly noticing how many excellent little bits of physical acting McCoy is always integrating into his performance, such as his umbrella getting stuck in the shuttlecraft door and using his umbrella handle to close a gate. I’m particularly impressed by the way these little comic moments are used to counterpoint the Doctor’s more brooding side. Suddenly this new Doctor seems to have an awful lot of depth. Davison may have been a better actor, but this is arguably the best Doctor since Tom Baker.

The Doctor communicates with the Imperial Dalek mother ship, claiming to be “President Elect” of the High Council. Er, not when we last checked he wasn’t. Just how many untelevised stories did we miss out on between Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani? But then, if he’s 953 that would imply a gap of fifty years. A lot can happen in that time. For example, the Doctor seems to be carrying out some kind of long term plan against the Dalek, and reels off a long list of fancy Time Lord titles. Davros (for it is he), on the other hand, seems hell-bent against the Time Lords. It’s almost as if there’s some kind of, I dunno, “Time War” of some kind under way.

Anyway, the Doctor essentially destroys Skaro, just like that. It’s a very new departure for the Doctor, which could end up either very good or very bad; it all depends on where all this is going in the long term. For now, though, this story is fab.



Brilliant, a strong 5/5. Fast paced, exciting, and just as good twenty-one years later.

Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks

Part One

“You forgot I’m a doctor. When they slice me open I’ll know the name and function of each organ that plops out.”

It’s quite alarming to see Eric Saward’s name in block capitals at the start. Is this the first time the writer’s name has been displayed like this or have I not been paying attention?

Aside from this piece of apparent self-aggrandisement on the part of our glorious script editor, it’s a promising start. The snowy landscape looks great and, uniquely for this season, the TARDIS lands immediately with no faffing about.

This is Necros, and for some reason the Doctor has decided that he and Peri are to attend the funeral of some bloke called Arthur Stengos, which is an odd thing for a time traveller to do; what particular connection does he have to the particular time period where Stengos has just died? Anyway, he and Peri are still keeping up their veggie lifestyle with the Doctor rustling up some nut roll, and Saward mentions his Speelsnapes for the first time.

We meet the embalmers- chiefly Jobel, a git with a toupee, and poor Tasambeker, who bewilderingly has unrequited feelings for this total arse, brilliantly portrayed by Clive Swift. There’s an agreeably realistic undercurrent of gallows humour which helps to carry along the exposition- Glen McCoy could learn a thing or two from this sort of thing.

More groups of characters appear: a couple of infiltrators skulking about; Alexei Sayle being quite brilliant as a DJ and almost making you forget the utter pointlessness of the character, who doesn’t really cut it as Greek chorus material; and Davros (well, above the net) with some white Daleks. Pleasingly we get the traditional Dalek hum which as Deadly Lampshade pointed out (and I unaccountably failed to notice having obsessed about it for every Dalek story thus far) was absent from Resurrection of the Daleks.

The whole thing looks great, and is as brilliantly shot as one would expect from Graeme Harper- the shot where the camera pans down through several floors is magnificent. Admittedly the Dalek voices are a bit crap but I’m sure this is counterbalanced on the sound front by a top drawer rock n’ roll sound track which we’re unable to hear on DVD for sodding copyright reasons.

Eleanor Bron is a delight as Kara, with the mutually insincere conversation between her and Davros being great fun. Thing is, though, with all these different groups of characters it’s noticeable that the Doctor and Peri are being sidelined somewhat, not actually having entered the building where all the stuff is happening by the end of the episode. Still, we learn that the Doctor is now 900 years old. He’s aged a bit since he last mentioned how old he was then- he was 760 when he was Tom Baker, I recall. It seems we can only fit in those extra 140 years by assuming it happened while he was travelling with Romana.

I don’t like the Doctor / Peri relationship here- not only is there too much bickering and, yet again, no indication that they’re friends, but Peri actually seems afraid of his disapproval in a way which makes this feel far too much like an abusive relationship for comfort. For all that this story is very well made and cleverly scripted, it’s entirely lacking in charm or a sense of fun.

The glass Dalek scene is a case in point. Conceptually, yes, it’s great. But Stengos begging his daughter to kill him is not the sort of thing we should be seeing in a teatime adventure serial. Oh, and it’s odd to hear the Stengos Dalek speak of “racial purity” where that’s precisely what isn’t involved in the whole idea of turning humans into Daleks.

I like William Gaunt’s Orcini, a blackly humorous character with a dodgy artificial leg whose prattling on about “honour” does nothing to dissipate the obvious fact he’s going to turn out to be an utter buffoon. The fact that he almost leaves before Kara gives him the sequence for the bomb is highly revealing and a nice touch. Still, this is rather a lot of characters for a story this length, and it’s clear Saward is not going to involve the Doctor any more than he has to.

Isn’t it nice of Davros to cheaply sell his source of protein throughout the galaxy, thereby eliminating famine? I’m sure there’ll be no downside to this at all…

We end with the Doctor and Peri still outside the bloody building, with the Doctor disturbed to discover his own tombstone “as I am now”, meaning he will “never again regenerate”. I’m getting a bit tired with all these frequent and unnecessary references to regeneration we’ve been getting ever since Colin Baker took over- they do real harm in that by reminding us of other Doctors all the bleeding time they give his Doctor a real sense of impermanency which threatens to undermine the character.

Part Two

“But did you ever tell anyone that they might be eating their own relatives?”

“Certainly not! That would have created what I believe is termed ‘consumer resistance’”.

Again we start with some nice touches; Clive Swift quite brilliantly portrays the creepiness of Jobel’s attentions towards Peri, while the computer’s sexy female voice as it speaks to Takis is a nice little detail, and the Doctor’s reaction to the DJ reminds us that this story was made back in the midst of the Dark Ages of Radio One.

But mainly this episode consists of characters double crossing each other and the complex of betrayals untangling itself. It’s all very clever and well plotted, but we get moments of character along the way, such as Eleanor Bron’s brilliant reaction to the extermination of Kara’s secretary, telling us everything we need to know about their relationship. And the conclusion of Davros’s manipulation of Tasambeker and Jobel is horrifyingly predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less gripping as we watch it happen. The way Jobel’s toupee falls off as he dies is an inspired directorial touch.

Orcini and Bostock seem to kill Davros, but it seems that what they killed was only a fake, put there to divert the bullets of potential assassins from their real target- did he and the Borad go to baddie school together? He seems to have survived more or less intact since we last saw him, and is now able to hover in the air and shoot blue lightning from his fingertips like Emperor Palpatine did at the end of Return of the Jedi. It seems he survived by means of an escape pod; the small matter of the Movellan virus is, naturally, glossed over.

It seems that Davros takes the “best” bodies from the Tranquil Repose to become Daleks and uses the rest to feed the galaxy, to let them know it’s Christmas time. Must be an awful lot of bodies then.

It’s a great twist that Takis has invited Daleks from Skaro to arrest Davros, and for the first time since Evil of the Daleks we see a sort of mini-Dalek civil war. Delightfully, this bit gives us some Dalek poetry as the lines “My vision is impaired / I cannot see / My vision is impaired / Emergency” are delivered in perfect iambic pentameter by one of the Daleks.

Echoing the ending of Genesis of the Daleks, the Dalek incubators are finally destroyed by a great big bomb, and the Doctor makes it out by the skin of his teeth. Peri then demands to be taken somewhere fun, and the Doctor resolves to take her to somewhere which may or may not be Blackpool.

This is very well made- Graeme Harper has done an excellent job. The performances are universally great, too, and the script is very cleverly constructed. But the tone is getting quite seriously worrying by this point- this is one story about cannibalism too many; the Doctor is sidelined, appearing far too infrequently and affecting the plot hardly at all; and the Doctor / Peri relationship is by now looking very, very wrong. I can’t give this any more than a 3/5.

As for Season 22- well, with a relatively poor score of 2.571/5 it’s my least favourite so far, and I seem to be making a habit of saying that!

Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen

Part One

“I suddenly feel conspicuous.”

So, now we’re beginning a new 45 minute format, eh? It’ll never catch on. We’re also getting a new writer, apparently, in the shape of Paula Moore.

We begin with the new Doctor being very different from his predecessor- after procrastinating about it ever since Logopolis he’s finally getting around to repairing the Chameleon Circuit. Apparently he’s still a little unstable, which is worrying. This regeneration has been drawn out far too much.

Lytton’s back, still stuck on Earth, planning a heist alongside characters played by Brian Glover and an unmasked Terry Molloy. But mostly we’re just watching the Doctor and Peri hanging about in the TARDIS for ages before they land. They seem to bicker a lot, too. Still, they eventually land, in 76 Totter’s Lane. In spite of the Doctor’s claim that “This looks familiar”, it bears absolutely no relation to the junkyard seen in An Unearthly Child. It hasn’t got a roof for one thing. 

The Doctor and Peri are trying to trace a distress call from an alien being broadcast from Totter’s Lane in 1985, observed by those two policemen from Resurrection of the Daleks. Oh, and the TARDIS is changing it shape in scenes which I think we’re meant to find amusing. But it’s not just Totter’s Lane; this scene alone features a bewildering and self-indulgent excess of fanwank; not only does Peri recite the name of several past companions for no particular reason, but we’re told that the Terrible Zodin was “a woman of rare guile and devilish cunning.” And that’s only the beginning.

You can probably see already that I’m not hugely enamoured with this story, but I’ll defend it for one thing; for all the bickering between the Doctor and Peri it’s obvious that neither of them really means it and they actually come across as quite affectionate with each other, especially through body language. It helps that Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant have good chemistry.

A Cyberman shockingly appears in the sewers- and is immediately shot dead, oozing green, er, ooze. This is a highly appropriate intro for the Cybermen in a story which shows them to be disturbingly easy to kill. We discover that Lytton made contact with their ship behind the dark side of the moon- all very The Invasion. 

It’s nice that cybernisation gets a mention, but then the fanwank continues; the Cyber Controller and Telos are mentioned, and suddenly we switch to an escape attempt on the part of a couple of slaves on Telos- and to be fair the location is a fair match for the Telos we saw in Tomb of the Cybermen. Our two escapers, Stratton and Bates, are very hard-boiled style characters, almost to the point of being characters in a script by Eric Saward. But of course that cannot be, as this story was written by Paula Moore. Definitely.

The Doctor and Peri find Russell, and there follows an amusing scene in which the Doctor and Peri get the gun off him, and the Doctor seems to tell Peri to shoot him. Oddly enough, I don’t have a problem with this in spite of my increasing unease with the tone of the programme. The Doctor’s clearly bluffing and the thing’s carried off with charm and humour- it’s the absence of these things, after all, that have been my main concern with recent scripts.

Russell, it seems, is an undercover copper, and so he joins the Doctor and Peri in venturing into the sewers.

Meanwhile, on Telos, Stratton and Bates seem to be killing Cybermen with the greatest of ease whenever they stop bickering for long enough to do so, while the Cyber Controller directs things. For some reason the rather rotund Michael Kilgariff has been pointlessly recast in the role, in spite of the fact that both here and in Tomb his entire body in covered, and in the earlier story he didn’t even provide the voice. The result of this is, of course, that a certain softly pronounced “c” in the line “It is a fact, Controller” becomes a moment of comedy gold.

The Doctor kills a Cyberman with a sonic lance (guns and the Doctor again!), unfortunately attracting their attention. As the Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS, accompanied by Russell, who shows the customary lack of surprise at its dimensions for this era, they are attacked by Cybermen…

Part Two

“I can understand why they call them tombs.”

The Doctor queries the Cyber Controller’s survival and is told that he was “merely destroyed.” Er, yes. This begins a running theme of this episode; ridiculous plot points and fanwank references revealed to us by dull and often long-winded exposition. We get detailed references to The Tenth Planet and Tomb early in the episode which must have been utterly alienating to the casual viewer.

The Doctor, Peri and Lytton are stranded and, separately, all make contact with the planet’s indigenous Cryons, played by the likes of Sarah Green, Faith Brown and Esther Freud, all unrecognisable. The Cryons actually look great and, with their groovy hand movements, dignity and wit, are the best thing about this story.

It seems that Lytton was in fact working for the Cryons all along, which of course means he is an entirely a good guy and the fact that hitherto he’s behaved like a total arse in no way diminishes his unambiguously heroic status.

Anyway, the Cybermen want to prevent Mondas from being destroyed, so they’ve travelled back in time to 1985 so that they can use Halley’s Comet to destroy Earth, thereby saving Mondas. This is utter fanwank; the series is now becoming sufficiently self-referential that it’s eating its own tail. What on earth would the casual viewer have made of this?

Still, at least it fundamentally makes sense. Aside, that is, from a couple of tiny little flaws, such as the reason for Mondas’s arrival back in 1986 was that they needed Earth for its energy, and the question of whether the Cybermens’ survival is really served by changing history for the benefit of a completely different bunch of Cybermen and wiping out centuries of their own history.

There’s a nice scene where the Doctor wonders why the Time Lords haven’t sent an agent to help after he warned them earlier, only to realise that he is the Time Lord agent. Sadly, this is soon followed by a discussion of why the Cryons are helping him. As even the script points out, they stand to benefit from the Cybermen changing history as their planet would never have been invaded. The explanation that “The Cryons have accepted their fate” doesn’t really cut it. As for all that frozen explodey stuff that’s being kept in the cell- aaargh!

Things get even worse. I don’t mind violence as long as it’s not done in the service of an overly grim tone, but the scene where Lytton’s hands are crushed is utterly repellent. How was that allowed to get through? Also poor is the Doctor’s statement that the Cybermen “have only one weakness- they respond to the distress of their own kind”. I think, given the number of Cybermen we see being killed in this story, that his mathematical prowess may have deteriorated somewhat since Castrovalva.

More bad stuff rounds out the story; Bates, Stratton and Griffin almost reach the Cybermen’s control centre only to be killed at the last moment- very cynical. The TARDIS is suddenly stuck as a police box again with no explanation whatsoever. And the scene with Lytton begging the Doctor to kill him is just wrong.

Terrible, just terrible. The plot makes no sense, it’s unremittingly grim, the tone is all wrong and it’s all substandard fanwank anyway. 1/5. The nicest thing I can find to say about it is that at least it’s better than Underworld.

Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks

Part One / First Bit of Part One

“You’re pathetic.”

“That too.”

The opening scene, with the sudden appearance of the time travellers, the policemen, Rodney Bewes, and the casual shooting of the tramp, is fantastic. This is all down to Matthew Robinson and the location, however; this story is a mess, for reasons which are mainly down to Eric Saward’s script.

There follows a brief diversion to a spacecraft which looks very much like something from Star Wars from the outside, where lots of Saward’s trademark hard-boiled dialogue happens, much of it involving Rula Lenska. It’s a prison ship- hmm, I wonder, in this story with “Daleks” in the title, who the prisoner could possibly be?

A time corridor draws the TARDIS to the bit of London round Tower Bridge, and my, how that has changed since 1984!

Meanwhile, on board the ship, Saward demonstrates his admirable ability to come up with such naturalistic dialogue as “You fear attack?” and “Your bile would be better directed against the enemy!” The crew are attacked by a bunch of Daleks and… win. Perhaps not the most orthodox way of making your baddies seem threatening. Still, the zapped Daleks, with the visible mutant things, look just as impressive as when last seen in The Five Doctors.

Things turn around, of course, as we get to see a rather cool shot of a Dalek exterminating three people at once, and the Dalek Supreme turns up for the first time since Planet of the Daleks.

The Doctor and co have found Stein, some soldiers and the source of the time corridor, but Turlough seems to have found his way through into the ship. Disappointingly, the Daleks’ doors don’t make their customary noise. Can it be that we’ll never hear that sound again?

The prisoner- it’s Davros! And the Daleks’ gas weapons are making people’s faces go all minging! And the Daleks’ human underlings are dressed up as Daleks in a way that looks very silly! It’s all kicking off!

I remember seeing this on its original transmission. And yes, we did play at Daleks in the playground that week.

Part Two / More Stuff From Part One

“My vision is impaired, I cannot see!”

The way the Doctor and the soldiers deal with the Dalek that’s just teleported down to Earth is all exciting and well directed and that, but these Daleks are a bit easily killed, innit?

Still, I like Terry Molloy’s ranting take on Davros. He’s no Michael Wisher, but he’s a step up from the ranting-by-numbers of David Gooderson. I love his apoplectic reaction to being told by Lytton that the Movellans won their war with the Daleks, and that they’re plagued by a deadly virus. The Daleks are reviving him to find a cure, but little does he know the Dalek Supreme has no intention of keeping him around once he’s achieved that aim. Oh, and that’s Leslie Grantham playing Kiston, who’ll be hanging around Davros for the rest of the story.

Meanwhile, in London, the Dalek mutant thingy is on the loose, and everyone’s all worried. We get a false alarm that turns out to be a cat- I might be jumping to conclusions here, but do you reckon Eric Saward might have seen Alien at some point? Still, it’s good to see the Doctor joining in with trying to shoot it, using that gun the colonel so kindly gave him earlier. Saward is so good at not neglecting this gun-toting aspect of his character.

We hear Davros has been frozen for ninety years, conscious for all that time. Blimey. And Stein turns out to be a Dalek agent. Oh dear.

Part Three / First Bit of Part Two

“Why am I so excited? It’s the last thing I’ll ever do!” 

I think it’s the bit at the start of this episode where Stein reveals to the Doctor that the Daleks are planning to use all these duplicates that it becomes apparent that the plot’s a complete mess. This story isn’t just about the Movellan virus and reviving Davros- oh no, the Daleks have all sorts of ill-thought-out plans on the go. And without any real plot or theme, this story essentially consists of hard-boiled Saward-scripted characters shouting and shooting at each other for ninety minutes.

I like the scene where the Professor urges Tegan to leave while she stays behind to lie to the Daleks. Never in the field of television drama has any character been more clearly going to die. I’m reminded of a certain sketch from The Mary Whitehouse Experience here.

So, the Daleks are planning to use duplicates of the Doctor and his companions to assassinate the High Council on Gallifrey? I think this is the point where the plot jumps right off the edge of a cliff. Although of course in recent years it’s acquired a certain possible relevance to the Time War. 

Turlough’s ended up with Rula Lenska & co, as they attempt to blow up the ship. Turlough’s far from enthusiastic; I think it’s here that I can safely say that “There’s nothing we can do!” is now his actual catchphrase.

Part Four / More Stuff From Part Two

“I can’t stand the confusion in my mind!”

Suddenly the TARDISeers are all reunited, a sign that suddenly the plot has to start moving so everyone has to be in place. We learn that those mysterious cylinders on earth are the Movellan virus, although there seems to be absolutely no reason for them to be there of all places. And the Doctor sets off to kill Davros. Well, nothing can possibly go wrong there then.

In fact, this whole sequence with the Doctor setting out to execute Davros pretty much symbolises something very wrong with Saward’s vision of the show, something which has lain dormant for some time but is now being foregrounded more and more. Now, Earthshock was stylistically similar to this story, if a hell of a lot more coherent plot-wise, being hard-boiled, violent, and fast-paced. And I liked it. Season 19 was hugely varied in the different styles of its stories, no doubt because of the influence of two script editors, and in that context it was good to see this type of story. But in the context of this season that’s no longer the case.

I don’t read other people’s reviews [on the message board thread this was posted on at the same time as the blog, as with all of my Who reviews] until just after I post my own on to the thread, so I’ve been reading them almost a month after they were first posted and in ignorance of anything posted more recently. But I’ve noticed that in some of his excellent recent reviews (and very possibly in others I haven’t read yet), Nuallain has mentioned a running theme running through this season of the Doctor’s optimism versus the harshness of the universe. And this story seems to be where this contrast reaches a peak, and simultaneously where it becomes clear that Saward’s vision of the show is exposed as very, very wrong. Because the whole scene with the Doctor failing to execute Davros reeks of contempt from the author for the main character of the show. We’re being invited to sneer at the Doctor’s optimistic world view, and instead accept that the world is a cynical, nihilistic place. This is deeply wrong, and undermines the values of the show. I’m reminded of Alan Moore’s public regrets over what happened to comic book superheroes after Watchmen. It’s now become horribly clear that Saward does not like or understand what Doctor Who is about, and has no interest in its central character.

Anyway, ranting aside, it’s odd that Davros doesn’t mention at any point that the Doctor looks different. But the scene soon fizzles out, with most of the rest of the episode consisting of various characters shooting each other dead. Lots of dead bodies are on display. There are now two opposing Dalek functions, both of which are gruesomely destroyed by the Movellan virus. Davros is apparently hoist by that pesky old petard of his, and Stein blows up the ship and everyone on board. Lovely. Lytton and his two policemen friends walk away at the end, though. Sequel, anyone...?

It seems that, for some reason, Tegan doesn’t think that all this death and killing is her idea of fun, and she stays behind on Earth. Odd, that. It’s an effective and moving exit, with Tegan and the Doctor parting on unpleasant terms.

Awful. The plot was all over the place, the Doctor was shown as ineffectual and the whole thing felt like a cynical dismissal of all that Doctor Who is supposed to be about. I agonised long and hard about whether this deserved a 1/5, but eventually decided the direction was good enough to move it up to a low 2/5.